OBP-3 updates and reviews

Anybody used the 3 with a single pickup bass and a 2 pickup bass, and noticed a differnce.

 

I tried running the OBP-3 in my Q5 at 9 volts at rehearsal last night. I definitely like it better at 9v. It calmed the massive output down a little and took a bit of the edge off at max volume. I am digging it more and more the longer I play it. I am able to dial in everything from Tool tone to old Motown. Just gotta shield the cavity now, because I really don't want to be hearing Mexican radio in the middle of a gig.

 

I just put one in my 1990 Warwick Thumb 5, I think this ones a keeper.

With no bridge pickup in the usual position, you need to crank out some more bass to make up for the loss of standard neck pickup boom. I had a U-Retro in there before, and it has the cool feature of lowering the frequency being boosted as the bass boost increased. Unfortunately, with the Thumb this meant I needed pretty much full boost all the time and I found the sound kind of boomy.

With the obp-3 fixed at 40hz for bass boost, I can get the boost where I want it right away. I'm running it at 18v, it's plenty loud. I did try running it at 9v, but since I'm also powering EMG pickups from the battery I was getting some distortion.

 

What happens to the controls when you go passive? Do any of the controls act as a passive tone control? I assume the blend still works in passive. (?)

 

Well, it's not an active blend circuit so your blend/master volume should still work as normal.

You could also wire in a passive tone control easily if you wished.

 

If you have enough holes in your bass, you can do whatever you want. I'm not concerned about having a passive tone knob because I'm only going to keep it passive long enough to get me to my next battery change once it goes dead.

 

I just dropped one of these in my USA Deluxe Jazz and WOW. Huge improvement over the stock preamp. I may even keep the stock pikups.

 

Yeah, I'm very impressed by the amount of fat bass boost you can get. I tried my Warwick Thumb 5 out last night at rehearsal with it, and it sounded great. The combination of EMG's and OBP-3 sounded excellent, and I got a nice fat growly sound.

After trying out a bunch of different pickup/preamp combinations, I think I'm finally done.

Are you running yours at 9v or 18v?

 

9V. This bass only has a space cut out for one battery. I supposed I could squeeze another in the control cavity, but why? I'm happy with it the way it is.

I've never heard mids that sounded so great. Very smooth. If I boosted the mids at all on my stock preamp it sounded harsh. It wasn't a bad preamp, but the Aguilar is much better. Should be for the cost.

I have a set of DiMarzios that I planned on putting in there, but it sounds so good now a may not bother. I'm a little tired of soldering after putting in that preamp.

 

I can't wait until I install one in my jazz

 

I now have the aq pre-amp in a two pickup bass, and the differnce from a single set up is astonishing. I also spent the money and had stacked vol. and tone pots for each pickup, which increases the variablity by a ton of tone. the new pickups are bartolini jazz longs. I think that there output is much less voltage than the emg 40, in my other bases, this allows the 18volts to use the headroom, massively increasing the usable headroom. may change one of my single emg 40's, bass's to bartolini to compare differnce. the voltage match may be the thing.

 

thanks, Mr. Wilson!!!